How often are Am Law 200 firms getting involved in cases backed by third-party litigation funders? Law firm partners shy away from discussing their involvement on the record, in part because the practice remains controversial. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for example, maintains that third-party funding encourages abusive litigation. But these partners also say they're wary of the stiff fees that the funders charge. Talk to people in the funding industry, however, and they say that nearly every firm is either involved or interested. "We probably have worked with more than half The Am Law 100," says Christopher Bogart, the former Time Warner Inc. in-house lawyer who is chief executive officer of funder Burford Capital. He adds that he's seen a big change in attitude over the last four years. "Four years ago, when I would talk to a big law firm, I was often introducing them to the concept [of litigation funding]," he says. "Now they're telling me about cases we might want to fund."
One of the few firms that doesn't mind talking about its work on funded cases is Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. The firm is using litigation funding for some of the massive mortgage-backed securities cases that it's brought against banks, according to partner A. William Urquhart. "We had so many RMBS cases on a contingency fee basis that we hedged the risk," Urquhart explains. The firm has also recently worked on at least two other funded cases: representing a small publisher in a trademark case against Apple Inc. over the word "iBooks" (a federal judge dismissed the case in May); and a patent case in which client Shelbyzyme won a $50 million verdict against Genzyme last year.
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